Months had passed since we last talked
with Ms. Henny-Penny, whose famous declaration — “the sky is
falling!” — electrified the world. At the time, her barnyard
colleagues quickly fell into line with her, save one, Chicken
Little, who demurred. When last Ms. H-P and I talked, she scoffed
at her former friend as a “denier.”
So, the other day I called her to see how she was doing as the
recording secretary of what was now the Holy Order of the Sky is
Falling, the Hon. Al Gore, pontiff.
“I’m fine,” she said, “but more importantly, Mr. Gore
pontificated at a recent gathering in Washington and it was
thrilling. He said we could switch all of the nation’s electricity
production to wind, solar and other carbon-free sources within 10
years.” Does he have any experts to back up that assertion, I
asked. “Oh yes,” she said. “Just the other day Nancy Pelosi at a
news conference said the very same thing.”
“Hmm,” I replied. “Solar power now provides one-tenth of one
percent of our electricity, with wind not much more. How do you
propose to accomplish this feat?” “That’s easy,” she said,
“Everyone will follow our motto: a windmill on every automobile and
a solar panel on every roof.”
I reminded her that experts have estimated it would take about
$100,000 to make the average house capable of getting 100 percent
of its electricity from solar panels and that wind technology for
automobiles was a gleam in her eye. How would she pay for all
this?
“That’s not so hard as it sounds,” she said with a chuckle (or
cluckle). “Once President Obama is in office, Pontiff Gore will
simply ask him to increase the windfall profits tax on oil
production, the corporation taxes, the Social Security taxes and
the income tax rates beyond what he’s already said he would do. As
for wind-driven car, we’ll just ask Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to
pass bills requiring it. American ingenuity will do the rest.”
I rolled my eyes at the telephone and asked her why she and
Pontiff Gore were so obsessed with carbon emissions, which have
declined in the last year or so. “Carbon will cause the oceans to
rise, crops to fail, weather to wobble and catastrophe everywhere.
In fact, it may cause the sky to finally make its final drop right
on top of us,” she argued.
I asked her if she was aware that human beings inhaled oxygen
and exhaled carbon dioxide. “Yes,” she said, “and we are going to
reduce the surplus population worldwide to reduce that problem.
Abortion will help, but we may need a hand from starvation and
disease. “
“You’ve got a big heart,” I said. “Let me get this straight. Al
Gore goes around in a carbon emissions-generating private jet; has
his driver keep his auto running with the air conditioning on while
he gives a speech and lives in a large carbon-spewing house. He
then buys these so-called carbon credits to balance all of that and
he buys it from a company of which he’s part owner. So far as he’s
concerned, it’s a case of do as I say, not as I do.”
“Well, Mr. Smarty Pants, you’ll be singing a different tune when
your seaside house is underwater and filled with jellyfish and
sharks,” she huffed.
I reminded her that some 97 percent of carbon dioxide emissions
come from nature, not humans; that ice core samples going back
better than half-a-million years show that periodic temperature
increases preceded changes in CO2 levels; and that gloom-and-doom
scenarios offered by Al Gore and others were based on speculative
computer models. “So, Ms. H-P, while you may think the sky is
falling and the globe is warming, the facts are otherwise. What do
you think of that?” I concluded.
Her reply was: “Cluck.”
